My Jardine treadle press seem to have an uneven ink disc. When spreading the ink, the disc is left with a blank (uninked) round spot in the center of the disc. To me it seems like the ink disc is a little “lower” in the center. When I put on more ink than I actually need, the disc is covered with ink 100%, but that of course gives me blurry printing (to much ink on the clichee).
Does anyone in here have any experience with this? Is it recommended to try to get hold of a new disc?
As the situation is now - I print only on either side of the disc.
I have tried to lower the rollers where they touch the ink disc, but there is no “slack/room” there - the rollers touch only the ink disc - the bearers kind of stop where the disc starts…
I hope someone in this brilliant community have any advice?

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Put a good straightedge across the disc and see whether you observe light under it in the middle.
Ink discs have almost always been ground with an almost imperceptible “crown” to eliminate this kind of occurrence. This disc might have had some kind of casting shrink flaw which was never corrected, through “annealing”.
Also, a disc which has been cracked and rejoined improperly might exhibit something like this.
Frank.

Thank you Frank, for your response. I have put a straight metal ruler across the disc and I do see light under the ruler in the middle of the disc.
Would you suggest having a new one made or try to fix the old one?
Regards, Silja

Try building it up with automotive body filler, then carefully sanding it smooth. Afterwards, it will need to be thoroughly sealed with some kind of varnish. No guarantee that this treatment will work!
Frank.

Hi Silja
I too had a similar problem with the ink disk on my Model platen. After taking advice (from helpful members of Briar Press among others) I asked an engineer from a precision engineering shop to try and grind it flat. This was not without risk as the disk (from a 9” x 6” press) was too large for most lathes and (as I understand it) had to be ground while held ‘flat’ (horizontal).
However, it worked: the engineer said the disk was 16 thou out of flat, and managed to reduce this to 4 thou. I also had the disk polished after grinding and it now transmits ink evenly across the full width of the rollers.
I think the post on here where this is discussed is ‘Ink disk polishing’ under ‘Troubleshooting the Press’ from Sept 2018.
Of course this will only work if the disk is ‘thick’ enough to to allow grinding. I had to insist that the engineer only carried on if he was positive he could do the job - a replacement ink disk if it all went wrong would not have been easy to find.
Hope this helps and you can sort the problem.
Geoff